Pressure-sensitive adhesive laminates are common in products from numerous industries, including the medical and consumer healthcare industries. Within these industries, pressure-sensitive adhesive laminates may be used for transdermal patches, medical tapes, wound dressings, and topical skin patches. While this section and the disclosure herein may focus on medical and consumer healthcare applications, it should be understood that this disclosure is not limited to these applications or industries.
A common process used to manufacture pressure-sensitive adhesive laminates involves a continuous solvent-based adhesive coating process. Such a process may employ any suitable type of solvent, including water. However, the thickness of the adhesive coating produced by such a process is limited. For instance, to achieve a thicker adhesive-coated product using a solvent-based adhesive coating processes, it is necessary to slow production speeds to give thicker adhesive coatings adequate drying time, or increase temperatures, which may cause the formation of surface imperfections. Alternatively, one may use such a process in batch mode to combine layers to produce thicker adhesive laminates. These approaches to producing thick or multilayer adhesive laminates are cost intensive and inefficient. Therefore, there is a need for a process that allows for continuous rapid manufacture of a relatively thick adhesive laminate.